The boyish Edwards and his 16-year-old son, Wade, were lookalikes – they sported similar haircuts, had the same intense blue eyes and determined expression.

They also were constant companions – until Wade lost control of his SUV and was killed in a devastating accident that sent Edwards into a tailspin.

During his darkest hours, Edwards rethought his life, and decided to enter politics – a move his son had been urging him to make.

Edwards had coached Wade’s basketball and soccer teams; he took his son regularly to University of North Carolina basketball games; he had his son work as a go-for in his law office on school breaks.

On a father-and-son expedition to Mount Kilimanjaro in 1995, Wade helped his dad reach the summit, coaxing him to the top after altitude sickness had John convinced he couldn’t make it.

Just months later, an essay about an earlier father-son experience – going to a local firehouse to watch his dad vote – won him a national essay contest. The subject: “What it means to be an American.” Wade took his proud parents to the White House for the award ceremony.

Wade also was planning to follow in his father’s footsteps. He told friends he wanted to go to law school and join his dad’s law firm – delighting the older Edwards.

And then on April 4, 1996, he was killed. His Jeep Cherokee drifted onto a median and flipped on a gusty highway as he drove to the family’s beach house to spend Easter with his parents. There is no evidence alcohol or drugs were involved.

“Nothing in my life has ever hit me and stripped everything away like my son’s death . . . it was and is the most important fact of my life,” Edwards wrote in one of the brief mentions of Wade in his 2003 book, “Four Trials.”

He and his wife, Elizabeth, his law school sweetheart, were shattered. They had been happy, healthy and very rich – thanks to Edwards’ lucrative medical-malpractice litigation. And they had two bright, wonderful kids, Wade and Cate, now 22.

David Kirby, Edwards’ law partner, recalled standing with his longtime friend outside the hospital where they had identified Wade’s body.

“He turned to me – he was totally in shock – and said, ‘I just can’t let his death go without some good coming out of it. I couldn’t take it otherwise,’ ” Kirby told the Raleigh News-Observer.

The two grieving parents withdrew into their own private world.

“The shards of a broken promise were everywhere: all over our house,” Edwards wrote in his book.

They left their son’s room untouched – even down to the half-finished, capped bottle of Gatorade sitting on a bedside table. They visited his grave frequently. And they rethought their lives.

When the couple finally resurfaced after six months of mourning, they had made some life-changing decisions.

“The kind of carefree happiness we had before is forever gone from our lives,” Elizabeth Edwards told an interviewer. “We will never have that feeling again.”

Edwards returned to work – but only briefly. Wade’s death had made his work difficult because it regularly immersed him in other families’ tragedies, many of them involving children.

He decided to run for the Senate, a career move he had pondered periodically in the past – with encouragement at the time from his son.

ELIZABETH Edwards said she initially thought Wade’s death would make her husband less likely to seek public office, but she was wrong.

“The one thing a child’s death does is wipe the slate clean for you,” she said. “It was something Wade wanted him to do.”

The Edwards also decided to have more children.

“We asked ourselves, ‘How in the world are we ever going to get joy back into our lives again,’ ” said Elizabeth Edwards. “It became clear, the answer was children.”

Emma Claire was born in 1998, followed two years later by John Atticus. Atticus was the name Wade was given in his high school Latin class.

The Edwards also turned to religion, joining a Methodist congregation and attending Bible study classes.

“As you would expect when Wade died . . . you do a lot of thinking and self-analysis, and my faith came soaring back,” Edwards noted. “My relationship with the Lord and its importance to me became clear.”

In Wade’s memory they established two after-school computer centers for area students, started a creative writing contest, and endowed a chair at the University of North Carolina law school.

And Elizabeth – who had used her maiden name, Anania, during the early years of her marriage – officially changed her name to Edwards.

From his very first step in the political arena, Edwards has steadfastly avoided any mention of his son’s death – making it clear he doesn’t want to exploit it politically.

When he interviewed political consultants for his 1998 Senate campaign, he told the candidates “if you so much as write one word about my son or in any way use him for political purposes, you will be fired . . . and to the extent that I can, I will sue you,” recalled Kirby, his law partner.

But he always carries a memento of his son with him – he wears Wade’s Outward Bound pin on his lapel.

In the afterword of his book,Edwards explains why he included so few mentions of his lost son:

“When I began to think about this book, I did not know how much I would say about Wade, or particularly about his death, and I thought it would be best not to say that much about it.

“But as I attempted to explain my life as an advocate and as a man, I found it impossible not to speak of him. As much as anyone is – as much as my other children . . . as much as my parents, my grandmother, and my wife – Wade is who I am.”